I Hope That You Catch Me, Cause I'm Already Falling
by starksands
Summary: "She isn't sure if it's because he's looking at her like that or because that fact doesn't worry her, but she ends up saying something she thought would have had to be dragged out of her when the moment eventually came." Alternatively, the many first 'I love you's of Emma Woodhouse and Alex Knightley. Series of one-shots. Based in the Emma Approved Universe.
1. Use that to my advantage

**A/N:** So the "I love you" series has begun! As a person who, as a general rule, hates sequels, I truly hope that any of these chapters are actually worth reading. They're fun to write, even if I don't end up being entirely satisfied with them, and they're a bit more difficult to write because we aren't very far in the story yet. So bare with me and leave criticisms to help build this fic along (or compliments, compliments are always welcome!)

For anyone who doesn't know, this is a tag series to "The History Books Forgot About Us", so every chapter is related to a chapter in that series.

And, if you haven't guessed it, I own exactly nothing related to Emma.

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"Of course I do" continued

_"And once he's done it, he realizes that saying all of those things, and all of those other truths he's kept so well hidden from her, don't feel half as good as the feeling of her kissing him back."_

Emma wonders when she stopped needing exactly seven and a half hours of sleep. Though a morning person by nature, she still used to always need two alarms to get herself out of bed at the required time. Maybe it was the fact that now, more often than not, she only had one alarm to rely on (not having brought her bedside clock with her), meaning she could only trust the rather fickle alarm on her phone.

Whatever the reason, most mornings she now awoke ten to twenty minutes before her alarm, and spent those dwindling minutes counting and recounting the diamond tiles on Alex's ceiling. Emma had discovered early on that Alex was a light sleeper, so though the idea of sneaking into his bathroom and fixing her bedhead was tempting, she knew she would never actually get away with it. So instead she lays there quietly, letting her mind drift like she was still fast asleep, waiting for their two alarms to wake up the man beside her.

It isn't much of a wait and by the time she counts the tiles for a third time, the tinkling of bells and the incessant chirping make an awful enough combination of noise to stir Alex awake. Emma turns to grab her phone off the bedside table and presses the 'snooze' option. She yawns spectacularly before turning back to Alex, who still looks half-asleep.

"Hi," he mumbles with happy smile on his face. He has half his head pressed into the pillow and looks like he's about to knock himself right back out at a moment's notice.

"Morning," Emma replies sleepily, as though she hadn't just been awake for the last five minutes. She settles back under the covers to move closer to him. With yet another yawn, she props herself on her elbow and pokes her boyfriend in the cheek.

"I'm awake," Alex complains, smiling again and opening his eyes fully. Emma can hardly believe, or accept really, that he could look so good when he'd just woken up and felt herself running her fingers through her hair subconsciously.

After following the motion for a few seconds, Alex catches her hand and weaves his fingers through hers into her hair.

"You're so unfair."

Emma furrows her brow, "What?"

Alex laughs and pulls himself closer to her. "It is six in the morning and you still look camera ready," he scoffs, moving his hand down to sit on her waist. Emma groans and presses her face into the crook of her elbow, whining "Alex."

"It's true!" he presses, tugging at the arm blocking her face. Emma groans again, keeping her arm in place to cover her silly smile. She was still completely unaccustomed to his compliments, which was yet another one of the new territories they'd stumbled into since they'd started dating.

It wasn't that Alex didn't compliment her before they'd kissed and he'd confessed how much he wanted to be with her, but it was different now. Emma was used to dragging compliments out of him, but now Alex just decided to spring them on her whenever he felt like it. It was disconcerting only because it made Emma realize how far they'd moved away from what they once were.

She gives up trying to fight him and lets him pull her arm away. Alex smiles at her in that way that kind of makes her forget that breathing was a necessary bodily function. He stares at her for a minute before speaking.

"Emma Woodhouse, you are radiant," she snorts and rolls her eyes before moving a hand to her forehead. "And, apparently, that isn't limited to any time of day," he finishes, still looking at her.

Emma meets his eyes then, to take in him taking her in. There's an honesty in them that makes her realize how much he believes in what he's saying. But it's more than that; it's almost like he's seeing all of her – all those parts of her that he fights with and gets embarrassed by tied in with all the things he enjoys about her. The level of adoration is so strong it's almost as if she can physically feel it weighing in the air between them. It doesn't help that his hand is still laying on her waist, his thumb brushing against the stripes in her pajama top.

She isn't sure if it's because he's looking at her like that or because that fact doesn't worry her, but she ends up saying something she thought would have had to be dragged out of her when the moment eventually came. Her hand moves from her forehead to wipe the sleep out of her eyes as she mumbles, "I love you."

With her hand half covering her eyes, Emma can only just make out Alex's face. She watches his eyes widen before his face settles into a look of confusion.

He lightly lifts her hand from her face to re-establish eye contact before stating, "I'm not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say you –"

But his question is lost between her lips meeting his. On Emma's part, there's an urgency behind her lips because she isn't quite sure she was ready for those words yet. Alex kisses her back calmly, as if to say that she could breathe and not worry about it if she didn't want to. It only made her love him more.

Emma pulls back and licks her lips, which were still dry from sleep. Her hands had slipped under the collar of his white T-shirt so she moves them to his shoulders before really looking at him. Alex smiles at her fondly before kissing her lightly once again.

"Not used to that," Alex says before leaning away from her again. Emma wasn't sure if he was referring to her embarrassing declaration or the kiss so she simply shrugs. Her boyfriend laughs, "Are you over your ridiculous aversion to morning breath, then?"

Emma groans, but laughs as well in spite of herself. Just as she had learned pretty early on that Alex was a light sleeper, Alex had just as quickly discovered that Emma didn't kiss anybody without properly brushing and flossing in the morning. The clashing of their two morning preferences had to be expected, they clashed in every other aspect of their lives, so of course they couldn't wake up and simply be adorable. (Well, they obviously could and did figure out a way to do so, but this was still the basis for their first argument as a couple.)

(The first of many.)

"Or were you just trying to avoid me hearing what you said?" Alex continues, while Emma rolls her eyes. "That you love me?" At the word love, he surprises her by tickling her. Emma sits up on his bed, giggling and trying to grab his hands and keep them away from her while repeatedly telling him to stop.

"Sorry, that doesn't sound like an answer to my question," he reports, after Emma had landed a kick to his side.

"Yes, fine, you idiot. I love you," she replies, through her laughter, batting his hands away with her own. But once she's said it, he stops fighting her and catches her face with his hands instead to kiss her. Emma sighs against his mouth, as reaction to finally getting to stop laughing. The kiss is sweet and gentle and Alex uses his thumbs to push her hair behind her ears.

When he pulls back, Emma's sure to get the first word: "And no, we both still really need to brush our teeth, please."

Alex laughs but nods with his forehead pressed to hers. They stay like that for a minute or so before Emma's snooze runs out and the tinkling of bells reminds them that the real world continues outside Alex's condo.

Emma pulls back first and Alex follows her lead, though he looks more reluctant about it. "Do you mind if I go get ready first?" Emma asks. It's a request rather than a demand and it feels foreign to her, especially because Emma always gets the bathroom first while Alex cooks them breakfast. But now, the balance felt off and she wasn't sure what to do to right the scales.

"Well," Alex cocks his head to the side as if thinking it over. "You _do_ love me," he concedes, patting his finger to his chin with a grin. Emma pushes him by the shoulders, and Alex uses his hands on her waist to pull her back to him.

"Alex," she whines, dramatically. He holds up his hands in surrender before gesturing towards his en suite bathroom.

"You're going to hold this over my head for a while, aren't you?" Emma asks, as she pulls herself out of Alex's bed.

"I don't know what you mean," he imitates her from once before, smiling over at her innocently.

Emma flips her hair behind her back and smirks at him, "Well, I'll just have to use that to my advantage." Alex looks up at her confused as she moves towards the bathroom.

"So, Alex?"

He makes a face to show that he is listening. "We should really discuss getting me that puppy."

Alex bites his cheek to refrain from smirking but chooses to flop back onto his bed instead.

"Well, seeing as you love me..."

Emma scoffs, "You are too easy."

"I said we'd talk about it, I didn't say it would happen, Emma."

She hums out a very skeptical "Mhm" before slipping into his bathroom and closing the door behind her.

It isn't until that weekend, when Alex surprises her with a trip to San Francisco, that the two of them would both stop holding her confession over each other's heads. Because after dinner at her favourite vegan restaurant and a trip to the national opera centre, Alex finally makes his own confession. And when she compliments his words with her own, he leans forward to whisper that they could consider that her first "I love you" if she'd prefer, because he knew that Emma was more for calculated acts than spontaneous ramblings. But Emma had been happy to tell him that it didn't matter which they considered to be her first confession, so long as she got to continue saying those words as often as she liked thereafter.

* * *

This is practically a drabble, but what can you do! Hopefully it was still enough, though I haven't updated anything in a while - my apologies, as always. I've been busy and the last few episodes have been anything but inspiring. Still, let me know what you think and whether I should even continue. If I do, there's a chance these chapters won't be in the same order as in THFAU, just because it's easier to write it that way and hopefully more entertaining to read as well!


	2. That's not fair

**A/N:** I'm really glad that you guys seem to have taken to this fic too, especially since I feel like I've been neglecting the other one. But I really appreciate the support this story is getting overall, it's been really wonderful. To MoonlightGardenias, EmmaFan, and toffeema, you guys are too sweet and your comments brought a smile to my face! To Stars May Fall, thank you as well; the idea of him not saying it back right away was because he wanted to meticulously plan for it since Emma didn't get the chance to do so herself - he wanted it to be special for her. And to JRB, these last two episodes have certifiably killed me so I think it's safe to say I've been somewhat inspired if nothing else. And I love that you picked out a favourite quote, it literally made my day!

So, after the cuteness of the last two episodes, I get to throw off the curve with this fic. To be fair, this was my intention for Chapter 3 since I wrote it - and I didn't even intend to do a follow-up at that point. But change is good, plus I can promise you one of the fluffiest fics I ever written for the next update! I hope that makes this at least slightly more acceptable.

**Note:** This chapter contains swearing and sadness, bring on the angst!

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"(3) I'm not going anywhere" continued

_"Knowing he'd be around when she got back on her feet, however, made the challenge ahead a lot less difficult to deal with."_

Alex feels his throat go tight; not in the way that it would if he'd accidentally eaten pine nuts and his glands began to swell up, but in the way that he had so many things to say in that one moment and he couldn't seem to shove the right words into the air between them. It doesn't help that he also feels like screaming until he's hoarse.

"I'm sorry," Emma says, for the third time, with the same kind of fear rippling through her voice as all the other times. And even though Alex can hear the blood roaring in his ears, there's still such a large part of him that wants to comfort her. This realization, however, only makes him angrier, and he finally snaps.

"I don't know what you expect me to say."

She looks at him pleadingly, "I just want you to –"

"What? Keep being your friend? Move forward like nothing happened?" Alex is speaking barely above a whisper_. She _would_ choose to have this conversation in his office_, he thinks. Well, he didn't need to shout to get his point across.

"Alex, you're the one who told me to think this through," Emma leans back against his desk, searching his eyes as though he could suddenly change the feelings in his heart. "And I have."

"Evidently."

She sighs, "But you knew that this was a possible outcome of that. I know it's not what you want to hear but –"

Alex cuts her off with a bitter laugh. "You really do know me, don't you?"

"What I'm trying to say…Alex, I'm so sorry and I know –"

"I am in love with you, Emma." His tone is even and calculated, his eyes narrowed at his best friend. There's a part of him that wishes he could shout it at her, maybe then she would understand. But by the look on her face, his words have had the right effect, or at least _an_ effect, regardless of their volume.

"I am in love with you and I thought I had made that clear enough. But, if after everything that happened Friday, the most you can muster is that _you're sorry_ _that you don't see a future for us_ then…I don't think I even know who you are anymore."

For the first time since the conversation started, Emma looks at something other than him. She stares at the ground as if to confirm that the world had not actually flipped upside down when she wasn't paying attention. Alex watches her furrow her brow and shake her head and knows what she's going to say next before she says it.

"You said you liked me, you never said…you don't know what…" Emma takes a deep breath; he knows she hates fishing for words in the middle of a sentence. "Alex, you don't love me."

"Emma!"

"You don't! And I was hurt and you were being a good friend and...and you don't love me."

Alex stares at her because he can't believe she is trying to write off the events of a couple of days ago. He doesn't know how to force her to recognize the reality of the situation. So he says, "I don't generally kiss you to prove I'm being a good friend."

"I'm not pretending that didn't happen, Alex," she replies, moving her hair behind her ears.

"Then what _exactly_ are you getting at?"

Emma straightens again, picking herself up off of his desk but making no indication that she was planning to move towards him. Alex isn't sure he wants her to, the distance between them makes it easier to focus on his anger. If she were closer to him, he'd probably back down sooner. But he deserves this explanation, he needs it to get him through whatever is bound to happen to them after this. So he too straightens and stands his ground.

"We're better off as friends, we both know it," Emma meets his eyes and looks like she is speaking directly from her heart.

"Fuck that," Alex says, crossing his arms. Emma doesn't try to hide her surprise, she probably would have even taken a step back if it weren't for the desk hitting the backs of her legs. But she does almost raise her hand to her mouth dramatically – it wasn't like Alex was known for spewing profanity. Still, he doesn't know how to get through to her so he stops thinking and just does what makes sense to him in the moment.

"Emma, I was crazy about you before I kissed you and I am so far over the edge now that I can't go back to what we had before. And I don't think that you can either."

She puts her face in her hands before speaking again, "We've been friends for over twenty years, Alex Knightley. If you think that I'm going to throw that away because you made me feel better after a professional setback, then maybe _I_ don't know_ you_ at all."

Alex freezes, struck by her choice of words. He and Emma may have never been on the same page before but now it seemed they were reading entirely different books. "You are unbelievable," he mutters in exasperation.

In response, Emma takes a step forward and Alex's gut twist into a knot, but he doesn't step back and neither does she. He can't tell if she's actually angry with him or the situation but he can't pity her, not for the life of him. She had held onto his heart for so long and now she was trying to throw it back into his chest, hoping to not have to touch it for too long for fear of it rubbing off on her.

"I can't just be there to hold your hand through everything," Alex says, shaking his head at her. "And I can't be your friend if that means you using my own emotions against me. I love you Emma and I think I always will, but the least you could do is acknowledge that."

Emma closes her eyes and he worries she might cry. But when she speaks her voice is steady, though quiet, "I can't lose you." She pauses to breathe and he thinks she isn't going to say any more when she starts up again. "And I'm not sorry that I kissed you. Or let you kiss me. I'm not sorry that you make me feel happy and safe. Or that being around you makes it easier for me to breathe. I'm not sorry that you make me laugh when I'm at my worst. Or that you're the first person I want to talk to about anything and everything," she looks up at him. "But I am sorry that I'm not willing to give up this friendship. And that I can't make any promises that I ever will be."

Alex isn't quite sure what he's doing, whether it's a sign of defeat or something else entirely. But he closes the distance between them and pulls her into his arms. She's wearing her five inch heels so she fits just into the crook of his neck and she welcomes the hug as easily as she once accepted his lips on her own. The memory still tastes bitter to him no matter how many apologies are given. But for a minute, he can remind himself of the history they have together. That, like she said, the decades of friendship between them can't just be ignored regardless of any deeper feelings. He may love her but he was her friend first, he wouldn't let himself forget that.

When Emma pulls back, she moves her hair back behind her ears. "I'm doing it again, aren't I? Using your emotions against you?"

He shakes his head, even though that's exactly what she's doing. But he's realizing that that's about as much her fault as it is his own, probably less so. It wasn't her fault that he'd rather see her happy than worry about himself. He may be tripping over the weight of his own feelings for her but it wasn't like she was using that to get her way intentionally. Emma is a lot of things but she has never been cruel.

Standing so close to her is starting to turn his head a bit and Alex is sure if he doesn't leave now, he'll end up doing something to throw them back into another mess. So he turns on his heel and moves towards the door again. He hears Emma sniffle before asking him where he's going.

"You know, it's been a while since I visited John. Probably about time that I did. Or maybe I'll head over to that hot spring Jane is always talking about. There's a lot in the world left to see, Emma."

"But…you said you weren't going anywhere?" his friend presses, twisting the ring around her finger. A nervous habit she'd first developed when she realized she was actually capable of failing.

"Yes, well," Alex stares off at nothing in particularly, "a friend of mine recently reminded me that people change their minds all the time." The words come out more biting then he intends them to be. But once he says them, he realizes he doesn't want to take them back. He couldn't hate her for not loving him back, but he could be angry with her for making him believe she could.

"Alex, you can't make me choose between being with you and losing you entirely. That's not fair."

"Really, because you're making me choose between being your friend and not having you in my life at all? Emma, no matter what we do, somebody losses," Alex tells her. And he sounds like a jerk, which maybe he is, but he doesn't see how things can return to what they were. Maybe if he really did only have a crush on her, maybe if they had never kissed, maybe if nothing had changed, things would be okay. But the information had been compiled and sent and read, there was no way of retrieving it now.

"I just need to figure some stuff out, alright? I gave you your space to think, now I need mine."

He watches her nod calmly before he opens his office door to exit this room, this conversation, this unfortunate chapter in his life. Before he leaves he hears her speak again.

"I'm so sor-"

"I know."

But no matter how much easier his life would be if that night had never happened, Alex couldn't wish that it hadn't. Because he's not sure if the two of them have ever been as honest with each other as they were that night. And in those last few minutes, when he proved to her that there were worse things in life than simply kissing her, he's not sure he's ever seen them as happy either.

* * *

It actually amazes me how much more I want to write in this particular reality, but this is all I wanted to say on this specific topic. Though I might write more for this story-line in the future... I'm feeling more inspired for my first kiss series (because I'm an absolute mess as a result of episode 32) so I hope to update that soon! Review if you can and rewatch ep. 32 if there's too much sadness in this!


	3. You should stay

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay! I've been sick all week and just haven't had a moment to post anything. But at least it wasn't a month this time! Anyway, to my lovely reviewers - you all keep me writing. To Stars May Fall and Moonprincess92, you guys really makes me want to continue that story a lot, so perhaps I'll test those waters in the not too distant future...So thank you for the compliments and incentive! To Ladyinshiningarmour, MoonlightGardenias, Emmafan, and Aniable, you all have me covering my face and squealing - thank you so_ so_ much! To Guest, the latest chapter in my other fic should satisfy your post-episode-32 cravings haha. And to JRB, you quite honestly flatter me so much; thank you infinitely! I can't even put words to that comment, I just hope I can keep up the quality of my fics as much as possible!

As for this fic, I might have stretched the truth a bit when I said it was my fluffiest yet. BUT it is fluffy and you might find it to be more adorable than anything else so let me know. (It's really hard to top the first installment in this reality though, but I tried!) Also, this fic kind of takes place before the ending of the previous chapter.

**PS:** There's so much product placement in this it might as well be an episode of EA. I hope there's no confusion over what everything is though!

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"(7) The whole nine yards" continued

_"In spite of everything, Emma still wasn't really convinced that Alex meant their relationship was now their own world, one that didn't rely on outdated traditions. Not until their fourth date, when they stayed up until two am watching cheesy comedies and woke up the next morning still on Emma's couch__."_

Alex wakes up disoriented and his first suspicion is that he is hung over. He hasn't been black-out drunk in years and yet that was the only thing he could think of to explain why he had fallen asleep on a couch and woken up with a bitter taste in his mouth. The reality, of course, is a lot more pleasant.

When he allows himself to wake up fully, Alex establishes that he's in Emma's living room. He recognizes the oval stainless steel coffee table that Emma had assured him was very "Emma approved". The television set was hard to forget, as he had plugged it in and set it up himself, so he recognizes that too as he blinks the last of the sleep out of his system.

The small, white Blu-ray logo darts across the screen in front of his eyes and after a few seconds Alex realizes the set and the player are still on. He's about to dart off the couch to turn it off – worried about both Emma's electricity bill and the environment – when he notices the warm weight on his shoulder.

Emma shifts slightly against him as if she knows he's awake and Alex's face breaks into a small smile. He adjusts as slowly and subtly as possible before leaning his head against hers and closing his eyes again. The day could wait for him just a bit longer.

He's not sure how long he's actually been sleeping when Emma shakes him awake. Blinking, Alex looks up at her confused and notices she looks really worried. This only deepens his confusion.

"I'm sorry," she manages to get out before he has a second to ask. She's pulling him off of her couch and he's lucky he's confused and lethargic enough to slow her down or he'd probably be out of her door already.

"About what? What's going on?"

Emma pulls her hair back from her face and reaches for a hair tie on her wrist before noticing it isn't there. Dropping her arms back to her sides, she shrugs up at him.

"I didn't mean to make you stay over and you probably think we're moving too fast now and that last night was a mistake even though we didn't really do anything but I'm sure you'll find –"

Alex breaks the rhythm of her rapid fire speech by kissing her. (It's literally one of the best parts about dating her, that he can stop her from rambling.)

She smiles slightly against his lips but pulls back, "Alex..."

"It's fine," he replies, still holding her face in his hands.

She cocks her head to the side and narrows her eyes slightly. "What happened to 'taking it slow' and 'general gentleman-like behaviour'?"

Alex laughs, "I don't think we've exactly rushed into anything. Though, it may have been a little early in the relationship to be watching_ that_ many rom coms."

He looks at her very seriously but they both laugh at the same moment anyway. Then, Emma drags her foot against the hardwood for a second before looking up at him.

"So, we're okay?"

Alex moves his thumbs along her cheeks, "I thought I was the one who worried too much?"

"A simple 'yes' or 'no' would suffice, Alex Knightley…" she closes her eyes but he's sure she's rolling them too.

He mutters a "Yes," with a drawn out S to emphasize how obvious that was. But he presses a kiss to her forehead, cheeks, and lips just to make sure they were clear. Alex Knightley was nothing if not thorough.

"Now come on, I'm hungry," he tells her, grabbing her hand and pulling her over to the kitchen. As they walk, his face is practically twitching from the overwhelming desire to positively beam about the fact that Emma looked just slightly dazed by his kisses. But he'd save that discussion for when his companion was a bit more awake.

"I need to shower," Emma reports when he plops her down in one of the kitchen stools by the island. She's folding her arms out in front of her, looking more like she was going to fall back asleep right there before attempting anything else.

"Do you want coffee before or after that?" he asks, his hands already grabbing mugs and Tassimo packages out of the cupboard by the machine. Emma looks up from the island's surface and hugs her arms closer together.

"I like having you here in the mornings," she reports, with the kind of sleepy smile Alex is certain he will never be able to say no to.

"That hardly answers my question," he responds, leaning over the island towards her. She pulls out her _Alex Knightley do not be smart with me _face and says, "After."

He grins, "Don't fall asleep in the shower and drown, then."

She slumps out of her chair and starts walking towards the stairs leading to her bathroom. When she reaches them, she turns back slightly to say "I would like to point out that I've survived my morning routine every day before this without you, you know that?"

Before answering, Alex leans his backagainst the island and opens his arms out in front of him. "Ah yes, survive. Not thrive."

Emma whispers a half-mortified "Oh my god" while trying to keep a neutral face.

"You'll soon find that I have a gift for mornings," Alex continues.

"Oh, a gift?" Emma asks, her curiosity sufficiently not peaked, as she trails her way up the stairs.

"Yup, it is uncanny. Plus, I make _killer_ breakfast."

"Oh my god, please stop talking like you are a sixteen year old boy. I can practically see you flexing your muscles from here," Emma shouts down as Alex hears the bathroom door open and close. He laughs to himself, before moving to get started on the coffee.

When Emma comes back downstairs – looking ready for a night on the town, though it was 10 am and they had no plans as far as he knew – she also looked considerably more awake. She still grabs her mug of coffee like it's the last one in existence but he knows she rarely likes to operate without it.

"Glad to see you survived," Alex jibes from his spot at the stove top, surveying a pan of eggs.

Emma moves over to his side, slipping her arm through his as she watches him push the eggs back and forth with a fork. She leans her head on his shoulder.

"You know how you have a gift for mornings?" she asks.

Alex laughs and leans his head against hers slightly, though it's difficult because he's taller than her, "Mhm."

"You should stay for tomorrow morning, too," she tells him slowly, eyes still focused intently on the eggs she wouldn't be eating.

On his part, Alex doesn't really know what to say and thus stalls by finishing off the eggs and then moving back to the island to fill his plate. He even manages to drop the frying pan in the sink and rinse it off before Emma pokes him in the shoulder. Even then, he shifts past her and presents her with her own plate – devoid of meat, eggs, and anything else Alex would consider actual breakfast food. He wasn't sure how well he did on the whole vegan breakfast front, not having practiced that as much as other meals, but the small smile playing on her face is enough to make him feel that his effort was appreciated.

"You're really bad with this whole 'yes' or 'no' idea, did you know?" Emma mocks, as she returns to her stool.

Alex turns to face her from his own seat. They were sitting kitty-corner to one another and he caught her foot with both of his. "Do you really want me to stay over tonight?"

She eats two pieces of pineapple before replying, "I want you to stay over all weekend."

He lets out a deep breath and looks out her kitchen window while thinking the idea over. Despite having promised her he'd stop being overly formal, Alex still wasn't sure if spending two more days in her condo was the best idea at the moment. It's a hard argument to make, though, since they've both done it before they started dating. But back then, there had been a lot less pressure and Alex worried that he would start stressing again – which hadn't done well for him the last time.

Emma moves her foot along his right pant leg to bring his attention back to her. It solidifies his belief that he doesn't really have a say in this, or at least that it would be nearly impossible to say no to her.

"I'll have to go home to grab stuff."

"Is that a yes?" she inches closer to him and grabs his forearm.

"That includes work, which I need to finish over the weekend."

"This is sounding most definitely like a yes," she bites her lip and offers him a small smile.

Alex smiles back and leans in a bit closer, "Yes for tonight and we'll see how that goes, okay?"

Her "Okay" is almost lost on him as she closes the distance between them to kiss him. She wraps her arms around his neck and narrowly misses knocking his drink over, not that he would have cared much.

After breakfast, Alex heads out to his condo to grab some essentials. He does a few quick errands on the way back that end up taking longer than he expected. They're usually spread out over the whole weekend so they don't tend to take as long, but when he tries to cram them all into one Saturday morning, they end up taking up the better part of three hours. Just as he's parking in Emma's driveway, he receives her text that tells him she'll be visiting her father until 4:30 – a tradition he knew about but had forgotten somewhere between picking up his vitamins and mailing two packages to his extended family.

He uses the spare key to let himself back in and starts working on his latest attempt to crunch some crucial numbers in order to be free for when Emma returned.

Of course, he wasn't, and Emma laughs at the sight of him typing away on her couch when she comes through the door.

"You definitely know how to keep yourself busy without me," she jokes, dropping off her purse and keys on the coffee table before joining him on the couch. "You know that I do have an office – that place with a desk and ergonomic chair where you can do all the silly math you want?"

"It even has lamps," he retorts, leaning over to kiss her in greeting. She rolls her eyes and smiles before leaning against him.

"I see you've showered and dressed."

"I had considered lounging around in pajamas all day, but I figured you'd be critical of that," he switches tabs to continue reading the essay he'd been skimming on emerging markets in Western Europe. It wasn't exactly work related but it at least meant he wouldn't be typing and jostling Emma's head on his shoulder.

"You should always be awake and prepared to face the day, even on the weekend," she says, and for once he makes no argument.

They stay like that for a bit until Emma gets up and returns with her Kindle, moving a pillow to Alex's side and lying down on the couch. "You can get back to your real work now," she tells him, and he has to smile at how observant she is even about his boring stuff.

When he finally feels like he has completed enough work, Alex shuts his laptop and turns towards Emma, half expecting her to be asleep. She isn't, though, but rather checking twitter on her phone.

"Anything noteworthy?" he asks, surprising her and causing her to sit up and face him.

"Harriet and Martin's date went well," she tells him brightly. She may still not be completely sold on the couple, but she cared about Harriet and had even started to warm up to Martin, so knowing they were both happy was enough for her right now.

"Good, so where did B-Mart take her?"

"Please do not call him that," Emma groans as Alex winds his fingers through hers on her free hand. "And I'm not sure, the tweet doesn't say. Maybe I'll call her…"

"Do you want me to start dinner while you call?"

Emma blinks at him, her thumb freezing above the dial pad on her phone.

"Yeah, you are never getting out of spending time here again," she says, shaking her head and grinning at him.

Alex laughs, "I'm sure you'd eventually get tired of the three meals I can cook that you'll actually eat."

She tilts her head slightly, saying, "True," before leaning forward and kissing him quickly, "But not yet." Then she's pressing the green call button on her phone and leaning back into the sofa cushions.

Dinner is gluten-free pasta with tomato and basil sauce (the simplicity was about the only way to ensure that they would both end up eating it). As they ate, Emma filled Alex in on Harriet and Martin's date at a pizza parlour (along with all 25 reasons why that was_ not_ Emma approved) and her visit at her dad's. Alex didn't have much to contribute to the conversation but he was content just to listen to her (and argue 22 of those aforementioned reasons). By the end of it, he even managed to talk to her a bit about the essays he'd been reviewing lately. She asked enough questions to seem interested but Alex could almost hear himself getting bored of his own voice. So after dinner, he opted for some time in front of the television.

They flick back and forth between Jeopardy and Family Feud until 9 o'clock, repeatedly saying they weren't keeping score but both knowing they were doing it anyway. By the time they'd call it quits, Alex had garnered the most points, thanks to the Family Feud question on "What people bring to go camping."

Alex follows Emma upstairs and listens to her complain about the necessity of hand sanitizer while in the wilderness, before reaching the guest room where he'd left his things. As he turns to enter, Emma notices him no longer following her.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting ready for bed…?"

"Yes, in my room," Emma says, crossing her arms as though daring him to deny her.

"Emma – "

"No Emma-ing me," she pouts, "Besides, that room's all dusty from lack of use."

"I stayed in there three months ago," he reminds her, lifting an eyebrow and trying not to smirk. He had been having his bathroom redone and she offered him the guest bedroom for a few days. Not exactly the same circumstances, but still.

"Yes, well," Emma uncrosses her arms to reach for his hand, "I think it's safe to say, things have changed since then." She drags him back slowly to her own door, and grabs the handle from behind her back.

"Emma, what happened to taking it slow?"

She rolls her eyes, "I don't expect us to do anything, it's not that big of deal."

He looks at her pleadingly, hoping that he had conceded enough for one day. She purses her lips for a minute and then sighs, "Fine."

Alex kisses her lightly and tells her good night, then he heads back to the spare room and falls asleep in a matter of minutes. But not before noticing that it was actually dustier than he remembered.

(...)

Emma hears the knocking at her door and almost wonders who it could be. In the space between sleep and alertness, she forgets that there is another person in the house with her. She should really be more worried, in those moments before she realizes it's Alex, but she doesn't assume that a serial killer or a robber would knock. So she takes her time getting out of bed.

Her morning greeting has barely left her mouth before he's lifting her off her feet in a bear hug.

"Why am I being hugged at 10 am?" she asks, snuggling into Alex's neck with her arms wrapped around him and half-way towards going back to sleep on his shoulder.

"Because I just finished wrapping up the accounts for our last client," he pauses for effect and she can feel the excitement in the tension in his muscles.

"And?"

"We broke even! Isn't that great?" he chuckles to himself and Emma feels herself smiling.

"Do you usually, what, pop a champagne bottle when I'm not around for these kind of successes?"

Alex laughs and leans her back against her door frame, but Emma wraps her legs around his waist instead of letting him drop her. He laughs again slightly.

"I'm just going to ignore you for the next five minutes so I can enjoy this, okay?" he tells her quietly.

Emma laughs and pulls back to kiss him lightly. She goes back to hugging him for a bit before something clicks in her head. She lets herself fall back onto the floor before asking him about it.

"Why did you figure this out at 10 am?"

He looks at her confused, "Because I just finished working on it?"

"Okay, let me rephrase: why were you working on it at 10 am?"

"Oh," he yawns, "I wanted to finish before you woke up. I didn't want to work on it anymore during the day."

Emma pulls at her pajama shorts slightly and shakes her head, looking for the right words to say.

"What?" Alex asks.

"You're just too much sometimes," she replies, yawning herself, and then heading back into her room to get changed.

Emma does yoga on Sundays so she heads down the stairs assuming Alex had forgotten (or alternatively, didn't know) and had made them both a heavy breakfast. Instead, he hands her a container of granola and yogurt, saying something about not knowing if she wanted to eat it now or take it with her. She was beginning to realize how poor she was at reacting to him being…well, him. Alex. Her boyfriend? Part of her was starting to understand why he wanted to take things slow.

Yoga was the perfect distraction from this thought though and once she returned home and showered, Emma was back out again to visit her father until 2. He asked her why she seemed distracted and she told him it was nothing. In truth, she hadn't really broached the topic of her dating Alex with her father yet because neither of them had said anything official about what 'they' were. She didn't think of it as lying because what is there to tell when you don't know what to tell? But she knew it would come up eventually, which seemed to weigh on her about as much as everything else that day.

Emma walks back home to find Alex on the phone with one of his old college friends. She waves to him and then makes herself a snack and pours herself some lemonade. When she actually leaves to sit on the porch, however, she realizes she isn't really in the mood to eat it. That's how Alex finds her.

"Hey, how was your dad's?" he asks, pulling up in the chair beside her like he had on their second date. Emma reaches into his lap and grabs one of his hands because she needs to feel grounded and Alex had always been her solid point. She feels how much larger they are than her own, and how dry they are. The urge to make a comment on that is less strong than it would normally be.

"Good, he was heavily invested in whether or not Henry and Emma got their flu shots this year."

"Flu shots?"

Emma shrugs and Alex laughs. "Well, I hope they have more Woodhouse in them than Knightley, they'll be far less susceptible to diseases that way."

She smiles slightly but she knows it isn't the reaction he's expecting.

"Hey," he says, squeezing her hand gently and looking at her with concern.

"Alex, what are we doing?" she practically blurts out. And it's a testament to how long they've known each other that she can tell he's suppressing the urge to be sarcastic.

"What do you mean?"

"Us. What…what are…we?" she makes a face at her own words because she is unimpressed with them.

"I don't know what you're asking me," and he actually looks genuinely confused, which is both nice and annoying.

"When you talk about me, who am I?"

Alex almost looks afraid to say, "Emma Woodhouse?" she groans. "Um…yeah, I'm not good at this. What is your question, exactly?"

Emma rolls her eyes and adjust in her chair so she's facing him. "Am I your girlfriend?" she asserts, because she is Emma Woodhouse, and she doesn't shy away from direct questions.

Alex stares at her incredulously before laughing. He's cut off almost immediately by her still straight face, but he's still smiling through his confusion. "I…I thought so?"

She hits him on the shoulder and grins, "Don't laugh! It was a fair question." He pulls her into his lap, bringing back more déjà vu, and shaking his head.

"We've literally been going on dates for almost two months."

"Hmm, well maybe you had to ask. It is the gentleman-like thing to do," she pokes him in the chest and he laughs again, brushing her hair away from her face.

"I'll ask if you want me to. I'll even take a knee," he jokes, pressing his forehead to hers. But she just kisses him instead because titles, traditions, clichés, and whatever else weren't important as long as he was hers.

She eventually pulls him back inside, conceding to his request for pizza (as long as it was home cooked). They put the dish in the oven and wait it out by making out against her kitchen island for the better part of eight minutes. When the pizza's done, they both burn their mouths on it before it cools and Alex convinces her to let them eat on the floor in the living room while they watch the American Idol auditions she had PVRed. And even though Alex has his arm wrapped around her shoulders and continuously presses kisses to her temple every now and again, it still feels very normal. Like all his silly dates before, she feels like she's just spending the night with her best friend, which she kind of still is.

"Do you think we're moving too fast?" Emma asks, when Alex sits back down after putting the dishes in the kitchen. He hands her a glass of white wine and shrugs when she raises an eyebrow.

"Not physically, but emotionally?" she continues when he doesn't respond.

"No," he says, putting his own wine glass on the table. He works the tie off his neck, which she didn't know why he was wearing to begin with. Generally, Alex hated ties.

"No? That's all you're going to say is no?"

"I don't think we are. What part do I need to elaborate on?" He leans back against the sofa to look at her.

"The why, if I had to take a guess," she replies with as much sarcasm as she can muster.

Alex sighs, "Because the only thing that determines what speed we're taking this relationship in is you and me. And I don't think we are and you've never made any mention of it before now."

Emma presses her tongue to her cheek and tries to figure out the best way to say what she wants to. "Relationships are about balance, right?" Alex nods. "Well…I'm not sure we're…balanced right now."

"Why?" he asks, moving to wrap his arm around her waist loosely.

She bites her lips and sighs, remembering her belief in being as direct as possible, "Because you're more open with your feelings than I am."

Alex blinks. "What?"

"You're always doing all this stuff to show how much you care about me and I don't feel like I'm measuring up to that so maybe it's not that we're moving too fast but that you're moving faster than me which is probably worse –"

He cuts her off by kissing her; she leans entirely into it. She normally hates it when she sees other people do that because she thinks it's their way of cutting out the emotional side of things. But as she listened to herself worry about what was going on between them, she was beginning to realize that that wasn't really a problem worth fussing about. Yes, sometimes she felt like he was pulling out all the stops while she couldn't even meet him half-way, but the truth was that she did care about him and he knew she showed that in different ways than him. It was almost strange because she never used to ramble in the past, it was just something about all this that made her feel like every second was precious and she had to get out what she needed to say as quickly as possible. Emma was beginning to understand why Alex had been so prone to worrying on all their dates – it was easy to worry when something really mattered.

When he pulls back, his hand is still on her shoulder and he's looking at her smiling. "Emma, I do those things because I love you. And that isn't a contest."

She laughs. He furrows his brow.

"Sorry, it's just that. I was going to say that I wanted to say that first," she smiles when he smiles, "then you had to go and be all humble about it."

"It doesn't hurt to still say it back…" Alex prompts. Emma laughs again and brushes her nose against his, before finally picking herself up off the floor and slouching back into the sofa, wine in hand. He rolls his eyes, but stays on the floor until the auditions finish.

On their way up the stairs later on, Emma feels the need to question why American Idol was on its thirteenth season. Alex just laughs and links his hand with hers up the stairs.

When she reaches her door, Emma turns to look at Alex and says "Good night." Even though she wants to ask him, once again, to give up on the guest room already, she figures they've made enough progress for one day. He echoes her good night with a smile but doesn't move to kiss her. In fact, he doesn't move at all.

Emma ignores this and moves into her room. She's only a few steps in when she hears his footsteps behind hers. The smile on her face is small but it does a poor job of displaying her happiness.

She turns around to look at him and he smiles back at her. Then he reaches behind his head to scratch the back of his neck.

"So, I do still need to go back to the guest room and change…but I thought this was a better message," Emma laughs in response and shoos him off before closing her own door behind him.

He barely takes up the left side of her bed and doesn't even face her. But it's a start.

(...)

Emma wakes the next morning with Alex's hand tangled in her hair and his forehead pressed to hers. He wakes up in the same moment as her and looks like he's about to apologize, albeit quite sleepily. But she beats him to it.

"I love you, too, Alex" and he positively beams at her.

"I'm really not sure I could have waited any longer for that," he jokes, and Emma knows she has absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to them. Not anymore.

* * *

A little different than their (adorable) dates, but change is good! Haha, hope you liked it and please review, as always.


	4. Apology accepted

**A/N:** It has been far too long and I do apologize for that! I've been pretty busy, first of all, plus I've lacked some creative energy, which is unfortunate. But I think the big thing was not being confident enough to post anything since I've been reading a lot of fanfic recently and I haven't been too impressed with my own (the first part of this reality is literally terrible I'm sorry if you read that oh gosh). Anyway, I'm back nevertheless mostly because I do enjoy writing these even when they don't come as perfectly as I would hope. Plus, I hear we're expecting ANOTHER hiatus, so I really needed to post something.

The reviews for this were really great and I'm just really glad that somebody's reading this series! Anyway, to Eternally Romantic, Aniable, toffeema, Emmafan, and Forever Day: you're all fantastic and thanks a lot, I'm so happy you enjoyed it! To MoonlightGardenias, I hope the series last long enough for that too, if I only get a kiss and that's it I may weep. To Moonprincess92, not at all rambling and I really appreciate that you wanted to say so much. It was definitely nice writing something opposite those dates, and I'm glad you could relate to what I wrote, that's really cool! To Stars May Fall, it's somewhat difficult to write their relationship the way I want to because I want to flush it out a lot from what we see on the show. So it's nice that it shows and I hope none of the 'I love you's seem out of place (and no I'm not saying that because of what I wrote for this chapter. Not. At. All.) To Juliet, I'm really flattered that you'd say that (though I'm not too impressed with the show lately either)! Also, I may have written a HUGE chapter for "So quiet, but so loud" and it may be my favourite one yet, so thank you for the inspiration! Otherwise, I'll just try to keep them coming.

This fic takes place immediately following episode 20 (yes, I went all the way back into the darkness of the James Elton story line for this one).

* * *

"(8) Life Doesn't Work Like That" continued

_But then he realizes that he really doesn't want to know, and just decides to trust that this is how things would return to normal. So he took her comment for whatever it was, shrugged and replied, "You didn't miss much."_

Before she can overthink what she's doing, Emma is turning the knob of Alex's office door and slipping inside. Alex looks up at the sound and she grins back at him as she takes a seat in the chair next to his.

"And here I thought we were done talking for the day," Alex mutters, saving the document open on his desktop and turning to face his business partner. He briefly checks and notices that the camera doesn't seem to be on, which he takes as a plus as far as whatever this conversation is going to be about.

Emma's smile falters a bit, "I thought we called a truce?"

"In spite of the fact that neither of us has changed our mind at all?"

She sighs, "Alex, when have we ever seen eye to eye about anything? The point is, I have exciting news so can I please have a conversation with my best friend and not my business partner, just this once?"

Alex looks back at her, confused. "As your friend, I'm still frustrated with the choices you're making."

Emma stares at him, practically shocked. Then she looks him up and down and blinks before saying, "You're mad at me."

"We _literally _just had this conversation. I am not mad at you, Emma."

"Yes, you are," she points her finger at him. "I can understand my being mistaken before, but now you're actually mad at me and I haven't done anything!"

Alex sighs so she continues talking. "Look I know you mean well when it comes to Harriet but –"

"This isn't about Harriet, Emma!" he meets her eye then, and in spite of the intensity of the look, Emma carries on.

"I know, I know, it's the principle of the thing and me involving myself in the lives of my friends, etc. But Alex –"

"Emma, honestly, I'm not upset with you about Harriet." He turns back to look at his computer and runs a hand through his hair.

Emma doesn't look at him when she says, "But you are mad at me."

Alex sighs and she watches him raise his face to the ceiling as if wishing for the right words to fall on his head just then. Eventually, he says, "I know you think I don't know anything about relationships."

He turns to look at her as if expecting her to contradict him. Emma tries her hardest to look like she isn't biting her tongue.

"But I know enough to give my opinion on what I think might be best for _our_ friend, Harriet."

"Right, because you've had such great experience with relationships in the past," Emma mutters, because she doesn't understand why he can't simply let this go.

Alex shakes his head and moves back to look at his computer. "See, there it is."

"There what is?" she complains, lifting her hands in exasperation. Alex finally turns to face her head on before responding.

"You, talking about my relationships like they weren't important. You, mentioning my girlfriend from business school like she meant nothing," Emma audibly _tsk_ed at that. "Despite whatever version of reality you've concocted, Emma, I have been in relationships before and they have mattered to me."

She narrows her eyes at him in confusion. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because those women were important to me. They all played a role in making me who I am just as much as anyone else in my life has."

Emma rolls her eyes and crosses her arms in front of her chest. "I highly doubt the majority of them deserve that much credit."

Alex blinks and stares at her in disbelief. He doesn't seem to be sure what to say next so he just sits there waiting for her to continue. She doesn't.

"Well, where did that come from?" he says, finally.

Emma visibly shifts around in her chair, uncomfortable. "I really don't know what you're talking about, now can I tell you what I came in here to talk about or – "

"Well, no," he interrupts her, turning his chair to face hers. "Now I'm curious. What exactly is the problem you have with my past girlfriends, Emma?"

She purses her lips and pulls up her phone from beside her, "This seriously has nothing to do with anything, Alex Knightley."

He watches her taping uselessly at her phone for a few seconds before he slips it out of her hands.

"Hey!" she cries, indignantly. Alex shrugs in response and gestures with his hand to suggest she continue talking.

"Do you not realize how ridiculously childish this is?" At this point, Emma is even refusing to look at him.

"Yes, well we can put all this childishness to bed once you've answered my question," Alex replies, slipping her phone just out of her reach.

"I don't even remember the – "

"My past girlfriends. What exactly did you mean when you said I shouldn't give them that much credit?"

"Oh that," Emma pulls at the fabric of her pants, seemingly far more invested in that than the conversation.

"Well, I wasn't referring to all of them," she meets his eye, as if wondering if that is enough to satisfy his curiosity at this point. He motions with his head for her to continue and she knows she isn't getting out of this that easily. "It's just the ones…that didn't…matter particularly much to you."

She watches him blink in confusion, shaking his head as if to clear it. "And how exactly did you decide that some of them didn't matter to me?"

"Alex," she whines, moving her hands up to cover her eyes. "It literally does not matter what I thought about your silly business school girlfriend or any of the others that have come and gone, it doesn't – "

"Why are you so focused on that?"

Emma sighs loudly. "You really need to stop interrupting me," she mutters.

"Seriously, Emma," Alex says, forcing her to meet his eye. "What is it about my girlfriend from business school that sets you so on edge?"

"You didn't care about her!" she bulldozes over his words because she has no interest in hearing them, hearing the accusation in them. Emma realizes that they're at the office and this wasn't the time or place for this conversation, but he had forced this out of her so she'll be damned if he doesn't get the whole bit. "You didn't and you shouldn't have because she didn't care about you. And yet you still feel so goddamn apologetic and guilty about it when you shouldn't and…and maybe I just want you to accept that already and move on!"

Alex again looks confused by her outburst, but he also looks like he's starting to get angry. The tone of his voice only confirms this further, though he struggles for the right words at first. "Where exactly do you come off telling me that I didn't care? What right do you have to – "

"You kissed me, Alex!" she practically yells it in his face because that's all she's wanted to do for so long, yell at him. Yell at him for pretending not to remember, yell at him for moving past it like it was nothing, yell at him for acting like he knew better than her when it came to Harriet's relationship with James, yell at him for not seeing things her way, yell at him for not supporting her, for leaving her at Thanksgiving, for everything that he deserved to be yelled at for. She had thought that yelling would feel like giving up, but it doesn't. It feels more like she's finally in control again, unafraid to say what needs to be said.

"You kissed me," she repeated, quieter and for no particular reason given that they both knew what she said. "And you would have done more than that if…" she lets the words hang in the air rather than complete the sentence. Mostly because she doesn't know what she would say. If what? If she hadn't said his name and reminded him that their relationship didn't usually involve them making out on his apartment couch? It wasn't quite the way she wanted to articulate it but that is essentially what happened.

Alex is quiet for a long time. He seems to be finding it difficult to meet her eyes as he runs a hand across his face and into his hair.

After a while, he tries to open with "We were drunk."

Emma laughs in response, "We are not rehashing that argument right now."

"It's true and you know it," he continues, eyes glued to his computer screen. "What does this have to do with Amanda?"

Emma takes a second to stare at him in disbelief. "Seriously? Barely a few days after you two broke up and you're kissing someone else and you're questioning why I don't think you cared for her?"

"That's not fair, Emma," he responds, his voice catching on her name somewhat. His anger, or whatever it was he'd been feeling when she mentioned what they'd done all those years ago, seems to have deflated back into its usual guilt. It was his default emotion for the entire situation no matter how much time had passed.

She didn't want to let his guilt get to her, but it always did. After all, she was the one who kissed him first. She was the one who pretended it didn't happen first. It wasn't like she could lay all the blame on him just because she had wanted him to prove her wrong. Just because he had failed her didn't mean he had failed himself.

"Well, I mean it was a _billion_ years ago," she raises her eyebrows to reinforce her hyperbole. "Hardly something either of us should get worked up over right now."

Alex looks up from staring at his hands to stare at her, looking lost for a moment. His eyes are searching hers for something, and she doesn't know what, so after a while she clears her throat. But he beats her to it.

"So this whole time, you thought I didn't know anything about relationships because I screwed up one that was really important to me?"

"No, Alex, that's not what I meant," she's shaking her head and trying to focus because he's looking at her so pitifully. "She didn't really care about you anyway, she wanted to move across the country and wasn't even willing to ask you to join her. I…you can't…she just wasn't worth it."

Alex is shaking his head, mournfully. "You don't get it."

Emma bites her lip slightly, this isn't the direction she anticipated any of this going. Though, to be fair, it's hard to believe she had any coherent idea about where they'd end up once she brought up that night.

"Alex, that's only one out of many relationships and you still treated her right and it wasn't even like the two of you were still together…" Emma's trying so hard to retrace her steps, to take back what she'd already said that she doesn't notice how frustrated Alex is becoming.

"Emma, you don't understand," he tries to interject, but as caught up as he is in his own thoughts she's just as caught up in her own words.

"And I was the one to kiss you first anyway and I could concede to the fact that we might have had a little too much to drink, still – "

"No, but I lov-" yet the fateful word doesn't escape his lips before both of Emma's hand are covering his mouth. Alex's eyes widen and he stares at her in disbelief but she meets his expression with one of terror.

"Don't say it," she pleads, closing her eyes and not moving her hands an inch. "Please. I can't hear that right now."

Alex's breathing returns to normal and he tries to talk past Emma's hands. The muffled words would almost be cute if Emma wasn't so genuinely worried by what he was actually saying. Still, when he raises his own hand to pull hers off, she lets go without much of a fight. He takes a deep breath before speaking.

"But that doesn't mean I'm not ready to say it, Emma." He's searching her eyes again but Emma is certain the only thing she's giving off just then is fear.

He gives a bit of a bitter laugh, "I guess you're right in the end, then. I'm hardly the expert on relationships."

Emma tries to say something but he doesn't seem to even notice she's still there.

"I didn't kiss you because I was drunk or upset about my break up. I did it because I had wanted to for so long and you made it so easy," he shakes his head and closes his eyes. "I wasn't lying when I said we need to make mistakes to figure out who we are, and that night taught me that I was an awful person. And I learned from that not to…not to go after anything I didn't deserve." He catches his face in the teepee formation of his hands, his elbows digging into his desk, looking like he was both developing a migraine and trying not to let himself cry.

"Alex, you're one of the best people I know," Emma says when she finally finds her voice. She reaches forward to grab one of his hands, finding this whole situation more than a little unbearable. But before she can, he pulls them back out of her reach.

"Please. Just…don't touch me, and I won't say what you don't want to hear," his eyes meet hers and she knows she's looking back at him with determination. So she grabs his hand and holds it in both of hers.

"Alex," she starts, making direct eye contact with him as she traces her thumb over his fingers. "You could never be awful, even if you actually put effort into it."

She smiles at him lightly, reassuringly. He responds with, "I love you."

Emma looks away from him towards the camera that was inconveniently off. It was a shame no one was there to capture her snarky expression that would put her partner's usual one to shame. She turns her expression towards Alex, and he can't help himself from chuckling just a bit.

"You asked for it," he says, with a cautious smile.

Emma rolls her eyes good-naturedly, "Good to know you don't use empty threats." His smile widens slightly.

"You don't have to…say anything," Alex says, pulling his eyes away from hers and shaking his head yet again.

"I don't intend to," Emma says, watching his shoulders slump slightly. "Or, at least not when you're using it against me to win an argument."

He looks up then, incredulously, but watches as Emma tries to fight the smile that remains obvious on her lips. "I was trying to explain my actions, not win the argument."

"Mhm, well you weren't very successful with either." He seems to want to contradict her but Emma just holds up one of her hands, the other one still holding his, and he allows her to continue. "This whole time I thought you felt guilty about that night because of Amanda. Not because of me."

She shifts in her chair and then directs the rest of the speech to their clasped hands. "I thought you were worried about hurting her or ruining what you two had or something equally as ridiculous, but this whole time you've been avoiding the topic because you thought you hurt me."

"I took advantage of you," he says, in the tone she's come to associate with his own patented self-loathing.

"But you didn't," she starts.

"Emma," he tries.

"You seriously need to stop interrupting me," she counters. He raises his free hand in defense and lets her carry on. "I kissed you, it was my decision, and I don't take it back, not entirely."

He raises an eyebrow at that last bit, "You don't?"

Emma shrugs, "I tend to not admit my own faults." He laughs and she smiles back at him. "Besides, it was a particularly good kiss."

Alex sighs, "That doesn't mean I should have kissed you back."

"Oh well now you're completely doubting my ability to be a good kisser," she looks at him waiting for him to challenge her, which he doesn't. "Well then, we can share the blame. That's my final offer?"

He sighs again but nods. She smiles again, "In that case, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be," Alex says, exasperated.

"Maybe, but I choose to be so accept my apology," she responds, challenging him once more.

"Fine, but I'm sorry too."

"Better," Emma says with a smile, before patting his hand with her free one. "Oh, and apology accepted."

Alex rolls his eyes but he also allows himself to feel a bit better about what happened that night. It felt odd having it all out in the open like they were discussing the weather or something equally as mundane. The event might not have plagued his every waking moment but it had really wound him up pretty tightly. Now, he really felt like he could breathe.

But he wasn't quite sure what to do next. He was aware that all of his cards were already on the table so there wasn't much else he could say just then. An awkward silence begins as they both wait for the other person to break it.

"You're not a bad person, Alex," Emma eventually says, quietly. "You dress terribly, you find spreadsheets more interesting than I believe is legally acceptable, and you really need to be introduced to a hairbrush, but your heart has never been anywhere but in the right place."

He seems surprised by her flattery, though the undercurrent of insults was one he was very used to. Nevertheless, he replies with, "Thank you, I think?"

The pair of them smile at each other in that way they do where nothing else really matters. But then Alex is reminded of the bridge he may or may not have unintentionally burned.

"As for what I said earlier, I didn't mean…to say it," he starts, worry already working its way back into his gut.

"Hmm, you seemed pretty confident in it," Emma replied, making him realize that there wasn't going to be an easy way out of this.

He narrows his eyes at her playfully, "Well then, I guess I meant that I didn't mean for it to come out the way that it did." Alex sighs, but continues nonetheless. "I didn't even intend it as a confession, but as an explanation for why I was so angry with myself. Emma, I knew how I felt and...and I kept acting like it would go away. And that wasn't fair to anyone; I take the blame for that."

Emma nodded, but didn't say anything for a bit, which wasn't boating well for his nerves.

"But did you mean it? Confession or explanation, did you mean what you said?" she asks eventually, looking him in the eye.

He can't read her expression but eventually nods. "Yes."

She nods back and stands up, dropping his hand. He isn't sure what this means but it doesn't look good so he stands up with her. Emma nods at him before gesturing to his computer, "What are you doing right now?"

Alex furrows his brow, "Touching up the last of our earnings to prepare to balance our year end books. Why?"

"I think we need to have lunch, don't you?" she questions, reaching past him to grab her phone off the edge of his desk. She rights herself back up and catches Alex's expression of uncertainty.

"Look, Alex," she gently grabs his forearm with her free hand. "I don't honestly know what's going on between us right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take for me to understand it, either. But I do know that I'm tired of whatever distance there is between us because we aren't being honest with each other, that I hate the thought of you being mad at yourself because of something that I did or something you can't control, and that, years ago or not, kissing you was definitely an Emma approved experience." He smiles shyly at the last one but waits for the contradiction that would ruin whatever good this speech has done so far.

"So, lunch, and we'll figure it out from there?" she finishes, surprising him with the simplicity of it all.

Alex breathes for a second before responding. "So you'll listen to what I have to say now? About James and Harriet, I mean?"

She makes a face but says, "I'll certainly keep it in mind." He laughs.

"And if this," he slips out of her grip to catch her hand in his, "doesn't work out, then what?"

"There's a lot to consider, and so much that might not work out in our favour" she says, looking down and appearing serious for the first time in a long while. Then, Alex feels her tighten the grip on his hand before continuing, "But at least we'll have given it a chance. Isn't that what you said this is all about? Making choices and learning from them?"

She looks so determined, which, when he thinks about it, is really just her usual appearance. When Emma Woodhouse sets her mind to something, it would be near impossible to see her fail. It was one of the reasons why he loved her, but it didn't leave him without his own set of worries. After all, he knew all too well that 'choices' can become 'mistakes' very easily. Alex wasn't sure he was ready to be one of Emma's mistakes.

So he looks up at her and says, "I'm really scared, Em. I don't want to mess this up."

Emma's face softens and she bites her lip. Then, without ceremony or hesitation, she kisses him slowly right there in his office like something straight out of a dream. He moves to catch her face softly and kisses her back in much the same way as she's kissing him. When she pulls back, Emma allows herself to lean her forehead against his, enjoying the silence for a few moments.

"Do you remember what I said the last time I kissed you?" Emma asks, after a while.

Alex shakes his head against hers because he isn't positive what exactly she's referring to. His head may also be a bit fuzzy from the day's turn of events.

She pulls back so she can look at him. "I said that I just wanted you to be happy. Now, and forgive my selfishness, I just really want you to be happy with me."

Alex moves his head from side to side, as though letting the idea roll over in his head. "I suppose that could be arranged."

Emma shakes her head at him incredulously, grinning at his response, "Oh, so now we're being funny, are we?"

He laughs and takes her hand in his own. "How about that lunch, then, Miss Woodhouse?" he asks, watching her grin shrink to a smile of pure contentment. Emma nods, wrapping her fingers around his and leaning against his shoulder.

And maybe things weren't meant to feel this easy. Maybe things between them were likely to fall out of alignment in a few days time, no matter how hard they tried to keep them together. But sometimes it wasn't a crime to ask for more out of life, even if you only got it for a short while.

* * *

So yes, this chapter was messy and probably terrible, but on the plus side writing it really helped me to write the next chapter (which is potentially my favourite of all my fics so far). (Like seriously I'm angry with how cute it is) (especially at Alex, gosh darn him). Anyway, I hope to update soon, I'll definitely try to keep this up over the hiatus!


	5. Coffee

**A/N:** Back again! And hopefully with a better fic this time around haha. But regardless of my qualms with the last chapter, I'm glad some of you enjoyed it! To Forever Day, I feel so special that you procrastinated using my fic - the goal of all writers, truly! And thank you, their friendship means a lot to me but I have to extrapolate it from what we're given in the show, which is a nice challenge too. To EmmaFan, "Life doesn't work like that" was supposed to be realistic - I'm actually surprised I wrote the follow-up chapter to be so hopeful. Honestly the rest of that particular story probably doesn't turn out so well. But I'm really glad that you liked it! To Stars May Fall, you're so nice to contradict me like that, so thank you. They both just want each other to be happy so much but they also want that for themselves, so it's interesting to play those two sides. And to Moonprincess92, thank you so much, the hiatus will be weighing on me too so hopefully we'll both get something out of these fics until it returns in May.

As I've already said, my reviewer Juliet convinced me to continue "So quiet, but so loud" and it surprisingly turned into something I really _really_ liked. It was one of those wonderful ones that kind of got away from me and turned into this mammoth of a fic. But I hope it is still of the good variety, haha, so enjoy! Oh and I used a bit of a new technique in this so I hope that doesn't confuse anyone too much!

* * *

"(2) So quiet, but so loud" continued

_"He still doesn't like the silence of a life without Emma, but he has a new silence to appreciate. The perfect sound of absolutely nothing when his lips meet Emma's and everything else fades away."_

It would be a lie to say that things automatically fell into place just because both of them knew how the other one felt. It would be _expected _but that doesn't mean it's actually what _happened._

In actuality, Alex's bliss was short-lived from the day it started. Emma had fallen asleep on his shoulder without realizing it and when he moved to clean up his rather dishevelled lounge and put the remaining food and drink away, she'd woken up. And let it be known that his friend did not understand the concept of being groggy after a nap, preferring to shoot up off the couch like she'd been struck by lightning.

"Hello?" Alex offered, not sure what to make of this turn of events. Emma turned to him with wide eyes but seemed to will herself to relax after a few seconds.

"How long was I asleep for?" she demanded, once her breathing was back to normal. She fidgeted by his coffee table and pushed her hair back behind her ears. Alex chose to take a step towards his kitchen, wondering if maybe the distance would put her more at ease, though simultaneously worried about what such results would mean.

"Half an hour, maybe," he guessed, readjusting the empty bottles and the glass in his hands. "Are you okay?" he then questioned when she didn't move from the spot she was planted in despite looking very much like she would like to be anywhere but there.

Emma turned to look at him as though surprised by his question and just gave him a nod, affirmatively. Alex nodded back, less certain, waiting for her to speak and then opting for continuing his movement towards the kitchen when she chose not to. He recycled what he could and placed Emma's empty glass on the counter before returning to the lounge.

"I think that I should go," she said, slowly and without looking at him as he walked the longer distance around the couch. Emma didn't wait for his response as she placed her phone into her handbag that she'd left somewhere by his front door. He had followed her and was now in the doorway leading to his entrance hall, leaning against the doorframe and watching her check to see if she'd forgotten anything, though they both knew she'd hadn't brought much else.

When she seemed satisfied with her belongings, she turned to face him in order to give him a rather less than reassuring half smile. "Well, I guess I'll see you later," she winced slightly when she realized how those words came out.

"We'll get coffee, or something," she added, giving him a slightly more convincing smile this time. Then she squeezed his forearm gently and slipped out his front door so fast Alex had to wonder if she was ever there at all. He finds himself standing there just looking at the now empty hallway. After a few minutes of being stunned, he moved forward to lock the door and realized that he'd yet to hear Emma's car start, or subsequently leave. For lack of anything better to do, Alex leaned his forehead against the cold wood of his front door and waited to hear the quiet roar of her car's engine. He imagined her doing the same thing against the steering wheel of her car, perhaps waiting for him to turn off the lights, thus signaling that he'd gone to bed. In the end, he stuck it out longer, and the gentle hum of the car engine forced his head from its position against the white-washed wood. In response, he locked his door and turned off the hallway light, wondering how they'd gotten into such strange forms of communication.

And as he walked back through his lounge, up the stairs to his room in preparation for bed, he was struck with the overwhelming worry that the silence he had just come to enjoy was beginning to feel like anything but.

(…)

Emma texted him the next morning and he feared opening it to see words summarizing the past night's events as a mistake or a lapse in judgement, he wasn't entirely certain which was worse. He just didn't want to go through this uncertainty again; he thought that had been cleared up well enough when he had said all that he thought was needed of him.

By the time he had a morning coffee and grabbed a muffin from the basket, he had resolved himself to the assertion that he would not give up without a fight. With this in mind, he unlocked his phone to read whatever cover story his friend had concocted.

Instead, however, he found:

**(9:14)** _I forgot, you don't like to drink coffee at coffee shops. To quote your brother, you find them "too overpriced"._

Alex laughed, outwardly and loudly. It wasn't exactly a love letter but it wasn't a rejection either. He could breathe easier knowing that her first instinct after an awkward situation with him was to tease him further. The very idea was so _Emma_ he wasn't certain why he didn't see it coming.

Ordinarily, he would rib her back, leaving them both to feel something akin to normalcy. But he didn't want that; he didn't embarrass himself numerous times the previous night to simply return to what they had already been. So, rather than sticking with what he knew, Alex tried something on her that he'd never done before, or more accurately, never done intentionally. He flirted.

**(10:27)** _I would drink it with you._

Which he then erased, scolded himself for, and rewrote.

**(10:28)** _I could be convinced to buy one when with the right company._

Which was equally terrible but he sent the response anyway. Her reply was almost instantaneous.

**(10:29)** _You have completely and totally opened the door to absolutely over-the-top coffee combinations, I hope you realize._

Followed by:

**(10:29)** _(And thank you for joining the rest of us in the world of actual drinkable coffee)_

He couldn't resist typing back:

**(10:31)** _You do make all of this sound so tempting._

Then, he imagined her laughing before shooting back with:

**(10:32)** _And here I thought you were coming for the company?_

And Alex decided that he very much enjoys flirting with Emma, even at ten am. Speaking of which,

**(10:34)** _When exactly am I being forced to accept my fate into the world of franchised coffee?_

But no reply came. Not then, or Sunday, even when he pestered her by suggesting he might just get one on his own. But to no avail. It was like she had gone radio silent, which was virtually unheard of when it came to Emma. However, he chose not to stress about it, given that he would see her the following day at work.

(…)

He arrived early, as he was wont to do, and skipped his usual route to his own office when he heard sounds coming from Emma's. Taking her perpetually open door as incentive, he strolled into her office taking in the sight of…well first her, in a knee-length red dress that somehow made her appear to be glowing with her hair in a high ponytail that would prove to be a distraction to him for the rest of the day, no doubt. But otherwise, he noticed the way she was organizing her office, which was very off-putting given who she was.

"Alex," she said, straightening and looking him over with a smile. He offered her a small wave before turning back to the, for lack of a better word, explosion of paper which seemed to have taken over her office.

"I'm sorry I never got a chance to text you back," she continued, lifting her phone off her dishevelled desk space. "I got wrapped up in all _this_," using her hand to gesture at the mess.

He raised an eyebrow, "I didn't know we had a new client?"

She turned back to organizing her paperwork before responding. "We don't. This is more like a more pre-emptive decision. Trying to make sure I'm prepared for," she looked up to meet his eyes briefly before becoming seemingly distracted by her organization "whatever surprises are in store."

Alex nodded, even though he was still mostly confused and she wasn't even looking at him to see him nod.

"Emma, you know you only organize when you're stressed," he tried, though he didn't quite want to go further down that path as he had a few guesses as to what was stressing her out.

She scoffed, "I'm not stressed. I'm pre-emptively planning, the textbook antonym to stress." As though to emphasize the point, she leaned back against her desk with a paper in hand that she was currently perusing. From the looks of it, it was a list of potential locations for the Weston rehearsal dinner – an event that had already been set. Taking this as a cue, Alex moved further into her office and around her bench until he found himself leaning against her desk beside her, picking up a bundle of papers.

"May I ask what you're doing, Mr. Knightley?" she questioned when she had looked up long enough from her list to notice him still being there.

"I'm helping you pre-emptively plan for an event you've already planned," he replied, being sure to make his sarcasm stick while pouring over sheets of paper he didn't quite understand. Put multiple-digit math problems in front of him, and he could solve them with barely a batted eye. But give him a stack worth of paper regarding the perfect shade of lilac and how it best compliments soft mocha and his brain may actually turn to mush. Still, he was confused as to what was going on between them so if that meant playing into her charade until she wanted to explain what was happening, then he would look at as many peonies as was humanly possible.

Surprisingly, Emma didn't complain. At the silence, Alex looked up to observe his business partner and found her staring at him with an unreadable expression. He furrowed his brow but when their eyes met a sort of lazy smile spread across Emma's lips.

"Glad to see you taking an interest in the real work around here," and if her shining eyes were any indication, she was wisely making a joke on his behalf. He pretended to look offended before pointing at the sheet in her hands.

"You say as you hold a list of the 'most romantic songs of the 90s and 2000s'," he leaned into her further than he had intended but she didn't seem to mind so he didn't pull back. Instead, she raised her head back to meet his eyes before responding, extremely close to his face.

"At Ryan's request! Trust me, I do not want to revisit that particular era of music, especially at a wedding…" she shook her head and shifted slightly so that her hand was next to his as they continued to lean against her desk.

"Oh, no? I think you and I remember boy-band crazy Emma Woodhouse very differently," he said smugly, to which she bit her lip coyly and it took him almost all of his mental capacity to focus on anything _but _that.

"I was _never _boy-band crazy," she countered, shifting again so that there was no conceivable space left between them. "To be boy-band crazy would suggest that I was boy-crazy, which you and I both know I never was."

Alex cocked his head to the side in disagreement, "Well…."

Emma laughed, "Shut up," she said while shoving his shoulder with her own. He laughed with her and pretended not to notice how her movement brought her hand over to partially grip his. It was harder to ignore it when she looked back up at him like she had every intention of kissing him, especially because there was absolutely nothing he would have done to stop her.

Though, because the universe is all too happy to ruin perfect moments (especially for him), she never got the chance to do more than lean over about a quarter inch before Harriet found herself inside Emma's office. Thankfully, the general mayhem of the working space was more distracting than whatever her boss and boring Mr. Knightley were doing because Harriet didn't even notice Emma leaning back, removing her hand from her business partner's, and pushing herself off her desk to meet her assistant in all the mess. And all Alex could do was sigh, return the papers to her desk, and sneak back into his own office with his hands in his pockets.

(…)

The rest of the week was so ordinary that Alex would have missed it going by if it weren't for the gentle reminders, like the weather changing. For the past few days, the only deviation from his normal routine was the two extra minutes he spent in his car before and after work. In those minutes, he found himself reminding his brain, and maybe even his heart, that he had kissed Emma. And, more importantly, that she'd kissed him too. He knew she was taking her time to process or whatever but it was these two minute pep-talks that made getting through the day livable.

His two minutes were interrupted on Thursday after work when he received a text from the exact person who seemed to be driving him insane.

**(17:34)** _I sincerely hope you didn't waste time and money on buying a coffee alone?_

Acknowledgement of their last texting conversation plus a hint of a potential date (-type, thing)? Alex felt pathetic, but wrote back anyway.

**(17:36)** _You do realize we work in the same building? Eight hours a day, five days a week? I may even have the office next to yours._

A lull in conversation that he expected would soon become another two days of radio silence with another terrible excuse tapered to the end. But the two days turns out to be just ten minutes. This time.

**(17:45)** _I've never known you to be such an expressive texter…_

Then,

**(17:45)** _Anyway, I've been busy_

His turn – **(17:46)** _With your pre-emptive planning? Because I have to tell you, I think it's less work actually having a client…_

Hers – **(17:48)** _Very uncool, Alex_

**(17:49)** _As is using the word "uncool" past the age of 12_

**(17:49)** _Spoken like someone who was _never_ cool past the age of 12_

**(17:50)** _Careful there, that was almost a compliment_

More silence, but this time Alex used it as a reason to actually make the drive back home. As he did so, he heard his phone go off, but didn't check it. A part of him wondered whether he should just drop by her place, as she seemed to find no problem doing it to him. A bigger part of him kind of wished she would be there at his place, sitting on his porch wearing an oversized sweater like she did when they were kids. When he did get home to find his porch quite obviously Emma-less, he began to wonder how things had gotten so messy since then.

_Probably around the same time you fell in love with her_, his voice of reason deduced. _Oh, shut it_, he thought back, intelligently.

The text he received while driving reads,

**(18:01)** _When I compliment you, you'll know_

And he didn't know what to say to that so he put his phone on silent and opted for going for a run instead.

(…)

It had been more than a week and Alex was realizing that it was becoming more difficult to find reasons to appear in Emma's office seemingly by chance. He stopped appearing all together by the second week, not so much because he had given up but more so because he believed he wasn't giving Emma her space. However, how much more space could he grant after this? Maybe he needed a few days away doing something, anything, to get his mind of the subject.

The strange thing was, Emma still kept appearing in his office from time to time. Usually just to drop off paperwork (the kind with the dollar signs not the ones with the dress patterns) or to run some small fact by him. He was used to that, but he wasn't used to her slipping into the chair beside his for no rhyme or reason. They would sit there silently for a minute, usually accompanied by the sound of him typing away at some spreadsheet or other, and then Alex would politely ask Emma if she needed anything from him. She would stare at him a minute, surprised, after he asked. Then she would shake her head, muttering something about forgetting what it was or realizing suddenly that it was a job more suited for Harriet, and leave his office without another word.

Alex didn't let himself think too deeply into any of this. His two-minute pep talks were already two and a half minutes long now, he really didn't need anything else to add to make it a full three minutes.

For someone who insisted on having a kitchenette in the office, Emma didn't use it often. That's why he was surprised to see her there one morning (week two) when he was making, of all things, coffee.

"Explain this to me," Emma asked, plopping herself down on one of the peach chairs and gesturing at his hands, which were paused over the various requirements for his coffee. He almost laughed at her question, as it was the one he'd been holding on the edge of his tongue for weeks, though not in relation to coffee. But he bit his tongue and looked at her strangely.

"For someone who's almost pretentiously proud of her various coffee blends, I find it hard to believe you don't know how to make coffee."

She gave him a face that said _You're an ass_ and he had to force his own to remain stoically neutral. With no appropriate response, Emma rolled her eyes and stood up to move next to him and point to her three-figure coffee maker and the various inserts among whatever else it took to make the stuff she drinks most mornings.

"I know how to make _my _coffee, Alex. I'm asking how you make yours," she said, turning to face him with her arms crossed and her hip pressed against the kitchen counter. That day, she was in a long, loose purple knit sweater and evergreen jeans with her hair down in simple curls, which Alex will attest is just as distracting as anything else she wears.

He took an extra second looking her over, without meaning to, but it nevertheless ended up putting him on the receiving end of one of Emma Woodhouse's trying-not-to-smile-but-very-clearly-smiling faces. He smiled back slightly but cleared his throat before asking, "Why?"

She rolled her eyes, "I'm wondering why you're so far off the mark, why does it matter why?"

Alex looked back at her sternly for the first time in a long while, "I like knowing why certain things are happening, as it generally helps me to understand them." And even though he meant for it to be sarcastic it came out more exasperated and he knew it was because he wanted answers to questions he didn't feel like drilling out of her.

On her part, Emma avoided his eye as though she knew what he was referring to. Honestly, it would have surprised him greatly if she didn't at least somewhat understand the undertone he was expressing. She turned to move away, assuming she had hit a raw nerve he wasn't quite ready to forgive her for, but instead Alex lightly caught her wrist in his hand and pulled her back to his side.

He walked her through making a pot of coffee the old-fashioned way and even though he was almost certain she knew how to do it herself, she seemed to enjoy pretending to be in awe at the simple things he did. The whole thing felt very high school in the 'Let Me Teach You How To Do This Thing While I Shamelessly Flirt with You' kind of way, but Alex honestly didn't care, he felt like he'd embarrassed himself enough around her to last a lifetime. So he made a point of grabbing objects from around her back, using a well-place hand on her waist to move her out of the way when he needed to, or just plain leaning in obnoxiously close to explain the simplistic step by step process.

But Emma's smile seemed permanently glued to her face so he couldn't care less about anything else.

Once the pot was made, Alex presented her with a mug of the black liquid, mixed with a hint of soy milk though he was sure he would need to add more once she'd had a sip. Most people don't really realize how bitter pure coffee is. She took her first sip and sputtered, as he expected her to, looking up at him like he'd just wilfully poisoned her.

Alex laughed and took the mug from her hand. She grimaced down at it before commenting, "I'm glad I just acquired a skill for something I will never need," which made him laugh harder.

"Oh, I wasn't so certain you were paying attention," he baited her, unsure of what to expect. He poured his own cup of the stuff, preparing to drink it black.

"The guy who taught me _was_ a little distracting," she responded, and it's a miracle he didn't choke on his coffee right then and there. Instead, he only raised his eyebrows and swallowed the small sip he took slowly, the bitter suddenly seeming perfectly sweet.

"I'm pretty sure that was a compliment," he said. The response was weak and almost could have ended in a question mark but Alex was barely taking any chances.

Emma just shrugged, moved her own rejected mug into the sink, and said "I told you you'd know." Then she was exiting the kitchen and Alex was beginning to realize that he really needed to think of an excuse for her to stick around one of these times.

(…)

The day was not one of his best, for more than the usual reasons, and he felt he was developing a bit of a migraine. Naturally, all this translated into a need for alcohol, so he slipped into his boxers, laid down on his bed, and cracked the seal on a single bottle of beer (which was all that he was allowing himself). He turned on the TV to some comedic cop show that managed to capture his attention for more than a few minutes. It was actually really funny and kept his mind off everything else, when suddenly his phone went off.

He searched the covers for a few minutes before mysteriously finding it under one of his pillows. Strange really, how that happens.

**(21:11)** _I think we've run out of things to talk about that are coffee related_

Alex found himself staring at Emma's text and realized that it was going to take far more effort than he was willing to muster just then to answer it kindly. So he slipped the phone back under his pillow and returned his attentions to the television set.

It buzzed again when the episode ended.

**(21:31)**_ Definitely didn't think that was a conversation-ender but so be it_

He again ignored it and channel surfed until he found another comedic cop show with different actors. How many of these did the world really need?

His phone went off again like a response to his question. The text was just a drowned out version of his name; he could hear her whining as though she was physically there in the room with him. He didn't understand why she was so desperate to talk to him, they had already had plenty of conversation that day. Mostly her talking to him, explaining to him that he was utterly clueless when it came to the important stuff in life – important meaning somehow related to her match-making or life-coaching. His being utterly clueless had more to do with him disagreeing with her than anything else.

In truth, he didn't have anything left to say to her and didn't feel like indulging her ego like she probably expected.

The stupid device didn't bother him again until he was just getting ready for bed and plugging it in to recharge. The message flashed on the screen just before it informed him that he had 6% battery left. Alex went to check it, against his better judgement.

**(22:50)** _You had better be away from your phone right now -.-_

And that's when he broke his own resolve and said what he had been avoiding saying for a very long time.

**(22:52)** _You said that we could try and you haven't been. So I'm done, too._

Then he shut down his phone completely and went to bed, which was only successful because he was exhausted.

(…)

The morning greeted him with three new text messages from Emma that he didn't bother checking. Instead, he cleared his phone of the alerts without reading them and got ready for work. If she needed to talk to him, she could settle for doing it in person.

Emma clearly didn't like the idea of talking to him face to face though because she didn't come to see him in his office any time that morning. He didn't receive any new messages from her, though there were a few in his inbox from his brother. For a fleeting and embarrassing moment, he wondered if she'd tried to contact him through John, but he perused the texts and found that John was just wondering if he had any plans to visit in the next while. His brother had new ideas for the menu and he needed, well requested, Alex's approval. He wrote back saying that he'd call him later that night and they could make plans; he was beginning to realize more and more how much he needed a break from here.

Harriet came to visit him just a few minutes before his lunch usually started.

"Hi, Mr. Knightley," she said wearily as she took a seat in the chair beside him. He returned the salutation before trying to clear up his desk a bit; he had recently had a mountain of paperwork thrown his way and he was still trying to make sense of it all.

"Oh, it's no problem. I'm sure this is how you like things…organized," Harriet offered, when they both realized it would take more than a few trips to get the papers off his desk. He gave her a thankful smile before asking, "What's up?"

She twisted a lock of her hair before responding, "Does Emma seem…different to you, lately I mean?"

Alex wasn't sure where this conversation was headed so he narrowed his eyes slightly. "In what way, exactly?"

"Well, she's been very…frazzled for the last while, but now she seems downright_ upset," _Harriet practically whispered the last word, as if the fact that her boss was human was a national secret.

On Alex's part, he blinked in surprise. Granted, he hadn't been seeing as much of his business partner as he was used to over the last month, but he thought he would notice if she was either of those things. Emma hadn't seemed any less than her usual confident self whenever he was around, maybe a touch more stressed but not in over her head.

"It's probably just the new client keeping her busy and she's feeling overwhelmed," he offered, but Harriet shook her head vehemently.

"I've met the client and she's the furthest thing from stress-inducing. She's all too happy to follow every one of Emma's suggestions," Harriet shrugged her shoulders in exasperation. "She's the perfect client!"

Alex felt as confused as Harriet seemed to be, the only advantage being that he knew one thing that might be stressing her out, but he had grown to doubt that was really something that was bothering her, given her actions. Nevertheless, he promised the young assistant he'd look into it once he got back from lunch, though how he intended to do that he wasn't sure.

"Thank you, Mr. Knightley. I think you're exactly what she needs right now," Harriet offered, as he led her out of his office. Alex looked at her surprised, but hastily nodded before heading to the door, and his car, to clear his head.

When he reached the parking lot at Highbury, one thing he didn't expect was to find Emma there, though they admittedly took their lunches at the same time most days. Still, he wondered if he was imagining things given that he'd just been thinking about her and then she'd appeared, leaning against his car without a care in the world.

As he approached, he got to see her more clearly. The sea foam green one-piece thing she was wearing probably didn't appreciate being pressed up against his car, though he had cleaned it pretty recently. She was staring down at her phone so she didn't see him walking towards her. Instead, she just kept standing there, repeatedly brushing the hair out of her eyes. For a minute, he contemplated heading back inside, his hunger be damned. But that would constitute running away, and he was really sick and tired of that escape plan.

"Alex," Emma said, having noticed his shoes arriving before the rest of him. She looked up from her phone to gave him a small smile, meeting his eyes though he was certain he did not look pleased to see her there. "Hi," she tried once more and this time he nodded to acknowledge her presence.

Her face sort of fell and Alex was beginning to see what Harriet meant by her being off. Without even the hint of smile, he could really see how tired Emma seemed, how down she must be feeling. The look took over his better judgement and he suddenly broke the distance between them.

"Hey," he tried, soothingly, while placing a hand on her shoulder. She gave him another half-hearted "Hi," but didn't try to catch his eye.

"I'm guessing you need to tell me something," he offered, giving her a smile to ease her back into her cheeriness.

She smiled back but shook her head, "No, I was really just admiring your car." And he laughed because he wanted her to be okay again, also the idea was ludicrous.

"If you're admitting to that, then something must be really wrong," he said, waiting for her to look him in the eye again before smiling. She laughed, "I was completely kidding."

"Yet you're still leaning against my car?" he joked as she stood up straight, crossed her arms, and raised an eyebrow. Alex shrugged in response, "Point taken."

He removed his hand from her shoulder and placed both of them in his pockets. She followed the motion with her eyes. There was another beat of silence before she spoke up.

"I'm sorry." That was it.

He looked at her perplexed for a minute, "For what?"

She moved to brush her hair behind her ear before twirling her side-ponytail, a hairstyle he knew often drove her nuts. Then she took a deep breath, and repeated the motion, which made him realize she was trying not to cry.

"I screwed this up," she complained, biting her lip and looking at the space just beside his ear. It took every ounce of self-control not to take her face in his hands and kiss her, but that wasn't what she needed right now.

Instead, he said "Explain to me what's happening here. Please," he added, when her breathing started getting out of rhythm. She shrugged slightly and went back to leaning against his car.

"Do you remember the night after your date with Diane?" she asked, and he almost laughed as if to say what else could have possibly been on his mind this whole time? But instead, he nodded and prompted her to continue.

"Well, the next day my Dad called and he was having…" she closed her eyes and tried to find the best way to describe her father's behaviour. But Alex knew the man well enough and didn't need her to say anything more than that he had needed his daughter that night. "So I went to go see him and I just spent the whole weekend with him, trying to relieve him of his worries, but nothing helped. I'm surprised he even let me go to work that week, but I visited him every night and, quite frankly, I don't think I slept for two days straight, probably more," her eyes shot open frantically, "I'm not trying to make excuses or use this against you or –"

Alex cut her off by clutching one of her fluttering hands in his. "Don't worry about that, just tell me what happened." She looked into his eyes for a moment before closing hers again, leaving her hand comfortably in his.

"He wasn't getting better so I called Izzy because she's always telling me to keep our father's health in check, like it's my responsibility, but she didn't seem particularly moved by it. She thought I had it all under control and somehow that stemmed into an argument that wasn't doing anything positive for our father's nerves," she dragged her foot along the gravel for a second. Alex wasn't sure if she had any more words left to give when she took a deep breath and continued talking. "He's fine now. Well, as fine as my father ever is, but I just…I'm feeling out of sorts, I guess. And your text from last night," he tried to get in a word edgewise here but she stopped him, "No, you were right. I wasn't trying; I was too wrapped up in everything else to treat you like a priority. And what's worse, I didn't know how to trust you enough to say 'Hey, I know you want to talk about _us, _but can we table that for right now so you can help me deal with my Dad' so instead I spent four weeks talking to you about _coffee_. The life-coach in me has never been so glaringly unimpressed."

He chuckled softly before saying, "You could have just said that."

"Oh, but our past conversations have been _so _stimulating," she joked, looking back up at him.

"I consider any conversation where you aren't viciously telling me how wrong I am to be worthwhile," he offered, before immediately wishing he could take it back when she winced in response.

"I'm sorry about that too," she started. "It's fine," he replied, shaking his head.

"No, it's not. I was angry because I just wanted something to go my way but I didn't even have the decency to tell you why I needed something, _anything_, to be going right for me just then." She looked down at the ground between them, "I really need to stop expecting you to read me like an open book, Alex. It's not very becoming for my sense of mystery."

He laughed again, wondering how she managed to make this situation funny when it felt the furthest thing from it. She looked up at him and smiled, "I like your laugh. I've missed it."

In response, he smiled and let go off her hand, which earned him a confused expression from the woman across from him. "I think we need to agree to no more secrets from either of us," he said, offering his hand to shake in between them.

Emma looked at his hand and cocked her head to the side, skeptically. "We have to shake on it to make it official," Alex explained, sounding more like a twelve year old version of himself than he intended.

She narrowed her eyes then looked up at him, "I'd rather kiss on it." And he'd be lying if he said his cheeks weren't the colour of cherries after that.

There was more laughter before she said "You really need to stop looking so surprised when I flirt with you, Mr. Knightley."

Alex bit his lip before responding, "I think the trick to that is practice."

Emma made a noise to confirm that before she wrapped her arms around his neck and caught his surprised lips in a kiss.

(…)

They do eventually get coffee. Emma isn't much of a franchised coffee drinker herself, but she loves the atmosphere of a good coffee shop. Alex informs her this is a result of her being pretentious. He gets an elbow in the ribs in response to that.

The place they eventually decided on isn't even a large multinational coffee giant with beans imported from all corners of the globe. Instead, it's an almost hole-in-the-wall kind of place in downtown Los Angeles, populated mostly by high powered businesspeople trying to catch a break between enormous company deals, no doubt. And the coffee is as bitter as Alex likes it, though they're happy to serve it with tons of sweetener and soy milk. Somehow, it manages to be the perfect combination of the two of them without even meaning to be.

When Alex got home that evening, his phone went off almost before he even got through the door.

**(17:10)** _Coffee - definitely a thing we should do together more often_

He wrote back after dropping off his bag from work in his office.

**(17:13)** _Are we back to discussing coffee, then?_

Her response comes through mere seconds later.

**(17:13)** _Nope! Temporary lapse in judgement_

**(17:14)** _How was your day?_

Alex laughed.

**(17:15)** _You're a terrible conversationalist_

**(17:15)** _And yet, here we are, conversing.._

**(17:16)** _This is the bare-minimum of communication_

**(17:17)**_ I beg to differ_

**(17:17)** _Based on what?_

**(17:18)** _We could be discussing the weather ;)_

**(17:19)** _Touché_

Alex returned to his office after sending the last text and setting his phone on silent. As entertaining as the conversation was, he needed to sort through some emails and call it an early night. After doing just that, he shut off the light in his office and headed up the stairs with his phone in hand. She had left him three messages.

**(17:20)** _Haha :)_

**(18:45)** _Are you free for dinner on Friday?_

**(18:58)** _I promise to find a place you'll actually eat at.._

He found himself grinning like an idiot at the screen of his smartphone. For things to have started out the way that they did only to come into alignment over just a few short weeks made him feel a great deal better than he would ever have expected. As such, he typed out a simple "Yes," before continuing a conversation that kept him up far later than he'd intended. Not that he complained, not even for a moment.

(…)

It's months later, when she calls him asking him to meet up at her father's house on a Saturday afternoon. Such a request could mean any number of things, so Alex chooses to be ready for anything.

She opens the door after his first knock and takes in the sight of him standing there, holding a take away cup from their little coffee shop downtown. Before he even has a chance to ask her what was going on, she's hugging him, her arms wrapped fiercely around his neck.

"Thanks for coming," she mumbles behind his back. He tells her it's nothing and wraps a single arm around her waist, holding her up and balancing the cup in his other hand. When she pulls back, she presses a slow kiss to his lips which he returns in earnest. Then she grabs the coffee from his hands and tugs him through the doorway into her father's house.

She had once described to him what it had been like the last time her father's worries got particularly suffocating. This wasn't like that, as far as Alex could tell anyway. So rather than spending time calming him down, Alex was required to get hard at work distracting him.

They play a few games of chess together first while Emma's father goes through a whole pot of some strange herbal tea. Then, Alex takes it upon himself to discuss the stock market, which he quite honestly only has a minimal interest in despite having a wealth of understanding in it. When Mr. Woodhouse tires of stocks, Alex goes over, for perhaps the hundredth time, the many reasons why their office was a safe working environment. He feels as though he could tell him about this until he was blue in the face and her father would still have his worries about air ventilation or roof sinking or rocky foundations. But with each reiteration of the safety precautions they had taken when choosing the building, Mr. Woodhouse seems to become a tiny bit more convinced.

After the extensive afternoon of chess, stocks, and building specifications, Emma's father chooses to part ways with them in order to take a nap.

"Always a pleasure, Mr. Knightley," he says, gripping Alex's hand with more gusto than the younger man is used to.

Alex nods before saying, "Same to you, sir."

Mr. Woodhouse stands and Alex joins him, Emma watching the entire exchange from the couch beside them.

"Emma will be happy to show you out," he continues, perhaps more forcefully than was necessary before exiting the room. Alex turns to his girlfriend who walks him silently to the door without so much as a hand on his shoulder.

"I'll text you in a bit," she says, sounding all too excited for someone who has been cooped up inside all day. Alex nods and finds himself on the other side of a closed door before managing to get any other words in. He sighs and stares at the door strangely before turning on his heel and getting back into his car.

Emma doesn't text him all day. He knows because his phone is at its highest volume despite the fact that he was going around all day performing errands. The last task is barely completed as he rushes to the post office before it closed at eight. He drops off a package and a letter while he was there because, as Emma once put it, he's one of those boring people who enjoys sending snail mail and believes the Earth is still flat. It was one of her more colourful insults that she'd managed one Saturday when he'd dragged her along to do the errands as she was staying over at his condo.

When he arrives back home, it's getting dark and he almost misses the shadow seated on his front porch steps. But he notices Emma's small figure under his porch light when he steps out of his car, phone in hand. She smiles when she sees him and he takes that as an invitation to sit down next to her, which he does.

He turns to look at her and she smiles again, and he notices her wearing one of his old university sweaters that he hadn't known had gone missing from his closet. She hugs herself in it and he waits for her to say something.

"That wasn't awful for you, was it?" she asks, referring to the afternoon he'd spent looking after her Dad.

"No," he replies, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her slightly closer on the small slab of concrete. He props his head on top of hers and speaks into her hair, "No, of course not. You know I enjoy spending time with him. I always have."

She's silent for a minute before speaking. "You didn't notice anything different, did you?" she asks, untangling herself from underneath him.

He looks her over, confused, but then seems to clue in. "I think my hand may be sore for a few weeks, but I'll manage," he jokes, flexing the hand at her hip that he had used to shake her father's. Emma laughs and moves her head onto his shoulder.

"I told him about us," she starts, voice tight, closing her eyes. When he doesn't say or do anything, Emma lifts her head to look at him with her brow furrowed.

He looks back at her and says, "I thought he already knew. I'm not exactly subtle." Which was true, but was limited really to him picking her up occasionally from her father's house. They were very rarely together around him.

Now that it was Emma's turn to remain silent, Alex continues, "I would have wanted him to know sooner, but it was your choice, I suppose." He wasn't sure if he agreed with his own words entirely there, but the important thing was that her father knew now and Emma was still there with him on his porch. "I wish I could have been there for you though," he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head gently.

But Emma shakes her head, "No, it was better on my own. _Trust me. _Besides, it was high time he knew anyway."

Alex laughs lightly, "Why's that?"

She turns to look at him, confused. "Because I love you," she says, like it doesn't carry the weight of the world. On his part, Alex tries to find a way to respond to that but isn't quite sure how, so he ends up looking more like a fish gasping for air. At his reaction, Emma smiles brightly, "You have got to stop looking so surprised," she says before locking her arms around his neck and kissing him. She was getting good at that.

Thankfully, he was getting pretty good himself so he moved to catch her waist in his hands. She smiled against his lips and he smiled back, bringing himself back to a time when he thought such happiness would ruin him. Now he welcomes it with open arms, getting lost in the feeling of her fingers in his hair and her hand tugging at his shirt to bring him closer. When they break apart for air, he realizes that he's building up an immunity to this pure elation, which only makes him crave it that much more.

"I'm sorry it took so long," she breathes out, her forehead pressed to his.

"I love you," he says, breathlessly in response, and Emma almost laughs. "I don't care, I love you. I love you so much, I literally couldn't care less." He kisses her lightly and repeats the words at least a half a dozen times until he's completely out of breath and entirely unable to do anything but sit there and just breathe.

Emma cups his face and smiles up at him and he says it again, amazed that he made it this long in life without saying it, especially now that it feels more crucial to his existence than breathing. He finally takes a break long enough for her to say it back to him and he stops talking, realizing how it is equally great to hear it being said than it is to say it. They both catch their breath in the silence.

"I have to go back to check on my Dad," Emma says eventually, and Alex shakes his head slowly.

"Yes," she laughs, "but we'll talk tomorrow."

Alex groans but gets up and helps her off his admittedly uncomfortable porch. He walks her down to her car silently and she unlocks the door before pulling him into a hug. It was nice and when she finally lets go, he feels bursting with energy again.

Emma says good night and presses a kiss to his cheek before slipping into the driver's seat. He tells her he loves her through the open window and Emma rolls her eyes with a smile on her face before saying it back.

"Now, may I go and uphold the title of bestest daughter ever, or do you have to say it a few more hundred times?" she jokes, and he narrows his eyes at her before waving her off.

Once she's out of sight he texts her:

**(20:21)** _Bestest is not a word_

And he can almost hear her exasperation from where he's standing.

So yes, there are perks to silence, to things better left unsaid, to actions that don't need to be vocalized. But at this point, Alex would be willing to fill every unjustified silence with those three little words, and even then, he doesn't think he would have said it nearly enough.

* * *

They continue to be the proverbial worst! Darn their adorableness. Anyway, I have a lot of plans for THFAU so hopefully I'll actually put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keys?) in order to get one of those written as soon as possible.


End file.
